Page 71 of Painted in Love

Once again, Clay kissed Saskia as Gareth applauded. Adrian smiled. “Do what you love, and the money will come.”

Clay’s eyes glowed. “Everything could explode for you. Especially when we prove that all of Hugo’s art is derivative of yours.”

Adrian couldn’t help adding, “Since the initial buzz, I have to say the women of the art world are cheering you on. They’re starting up a whole debate about how unfair it is that they have to hide behind male pseudonyms.” She laughed. “Then there are the misogynistic art critics having a cow that the artist they’ve been praising all these years is actually a woman. So yeah, I take back what I said. This will make you even more valuable.”

Gareth chuckled. “The battle of the sexes.”

She wanted to cheer him for that.

But because he was a lawyer, he had to say, “Since all the art you painted as Lynx was purchased legitimately, with Hugo acting as your agent, it might not be possible to reclaim those canvases.”

Saskia shook her head. “I don’t want them back. Those people paid for them. I just want everyone to know I painted them, not Hugo.”

“It could turn out to be just like Taylor Swift,” Clay said.

Saskia looked at him while Adrian knew exactly what he referred to. She let him explain. “After she got big, she wanted to buy back the master recordings for her first albums, but the label wouldn’t sell them to her. Taking advantage of a loophole in her contract, she rerecorded all those songs and albums and put them out herself. Those rerecordings are even bigger than the old ones. Any old albums became virtually worthless.”

Gareth nodded, a wry smile on his sexy lips. “The value of your work could skyrocket. The patrons who bought it will love you.”

Ooh, he was good. Very good. And handsome. And sexy. Adrian’s temperature shot up so fast she almost had to fan herself.

But she had to maintain decorum. “Since we’re all in agreement,” she said, “I’ll call a press conference.”

Clay looked at Saskia. “You okay with that?” When she nodded, even smiled, Clay jumped to his feet and punched the air. “We’re going to nail this creep.”

Adrian would have broken out a bottle of bubbly, but a knock rattled the door. Who the hell could that be on a Saturday?

Saskia, being closest, went to answer it. She stood stock still, holding the door open with a white-knuckled grip.

Then Adrian saw them. A nattily dressed couple somewhere in their early sixties, a purse hanging over the woman’s forearm as though she were Queen Elizabeth.

Saskia whispered in incredulity, or horror, “Mum? Dad?”

The bloodsucking vampires had arrived right on cue.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Her father’s hair had gone completely gray, and his shoulders, which he’d always held erect, seemed stooped, his height diminished. But her mother hadn’t changed at all, her hair dark and lustrous like Saskia’s, her face still carved in stark, unforgiving lines. But, on a closer look, Saskia saw gray roots sprouting from the part in her long hair. Saskia had the irreverent thought that she looked like Elvira, the campy vampire movie queen.

Voice familiar yet more gravelly than she remembered, her father said, “Oh my dear, all these years, we’ve never known where you were. But the moment we saw that press conference, we had to come.”

Even as they stood on one side of the threshold and she on the other, his words stunned her. So did her thoughts. Oh my God, they’re here. They finally love me.

Maybe they’d recognized how they’d abandoned her, leaving her to fend for herself. Maybe they understood now how badly they’d scarred her. Then she’d fallen prey to Hugo. She’d been desperate for love, and he’d spouted so many pretty words in the beginning. About how perfect she was. All the words she’d wanted her parents to say. Now they were here. Finally. After all the years she’d felt so abandoned.

“We’re stunned at what you’ve accomplished.” Her father spread his hands. “It doesn’t seem possible. How could you have made so much money from your art?” he asked, the last bit said with the slightest sneer. As if he could barely use the word art to describe what she did, what she loved.

Her stomach plummeted, past the floors, through the basement, down to the very ground the building stood on, taking with it all her hope. Because he still didn’t care about her. It was only about her art, which was now surpassing theirs. They wanted to reconnect only because their fame was on the wane, while hers was rising. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t looked them up on the internet over the years. They were still famous, but the art world didn’t clamor for their art the way it once had. Her parents were relics.

And they were here to use her.

She ached deep in her bones, in her soul, maybe even worse than on the day they’d kicked her out. Because now she’d admitted how badly she wanted to please them, even after all these years. She wanted them to throw their arms around her and tell her she was amazing, that they’d been wrong, that they were sorry.

Yet that subtle sneer in her father’s voice crushed her magical thinking. They’d come for her fame and her money. Nothing more.

She sensed Clay move up beside her, felt his caring, his strength, his love. He drew a breath, opening his mouth to speak, to tell them to shove it where the sun didn’t shine.

Stopping him with a hand on his arm, she said softly, “Don’t. They’re not worth it.” She had to handle them herself, the way she hadn’t been able to when she was young.

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